Well it's that time of year again when all my friends put their names in a hat and we choose our Secret Santa. Last Christmas I gave you my heart I got my friend Meliosa and made her one of my Curvy Clutch bags (pattern from Keyka Lou) in silver with a royal purple lining and embellished it with a purple feather hair clip which really takes the bag from plain to party!
This year to save me from tears (OK, I'll stop that now) the name pulled out of the hat was my friend Anna. This was quite a coincidence as all of this past year she has been dropping not-so-subtle hints that she would like one of my bags! So it was pretty easy to decide what I should give her! The only minor problem was that we got our Secret Santa names quite late this year and I didn't know if I would have the time to make a bag. Even so, I thought I'd check my fabric stash and have a look in the fabric shops to see if I could find a suitable fabric that Anna might like - urgh...it's really hard to pick a fabric for someone else, I just couldn't decide if she would like any of the fabrics I found!
However, I did have a small stash of already made bags that I had started to accumulate (in the hopes of starting up a shop). So after some deliberation I decided that Anna would like (eek - I hope so!) this bag. It's made from an old pair of trousers of mine (hmmm...can't decide if I should tell her that yet or not - what do you guys think, would that sound weird?!!!) which are like a kind of tweed with a gorgeous bronze sparkle through it. The inside is lined with purple tie-die batik which you may remember from my purple and red dress (from a good while ago!).
The bag on it's own is lovely, but since Mel's bag was embellished with a feather clip, I thought I'd better see if I could get a suitable one for Anna's bag. This was harder than I thought it would be - feather hair clips mustn't be as fashionable this year as last! But after a thorough search I stumbled across this lovely clip with fuchsia, plum and olive feathers - it picks out the various colours of the bag perfectly.
And the best thing about using a removable clip is that without it, the bag can be used in a more informal setting. Oh, and you can obviously use the clip elsewhere, so it's like a bonus gift!
Fingers crossed she likes it!
